Identity
by Sethoz
Summary: Kurt ponders about what it's like to have a tail while someone watches him. FIN


Disclaimer: Just taking a short brake from my long X-Men story to write this one-shot about Kurt. This is my first ever X-men one shot and my first Kurt fic.  
  
To Fp/Nitecrawler who asked me to write more X-Men fics. Here's one for you all about Kurt. ;)  
  
I don't own The X-Men, Kurt or anything in this story. Please, please read then leave a review.   
  
~~~  
  
Identity  
  
~~~  
  
The one known as Nightcrawler was alone in the common room. That day the children had come to him, all asking the same question;  
  
"What is it like to have a tail?"  
  
He had smiled at them before asking them his own question.  
  
"What is it like to not have a tail?"  
  
The had looked away then, embarrassed. Some had shuffled their feet and turned red. Kurt hadn't minded the question, the fact he had a tail, fangs and was blue had long ago ceased to bother him. Or so he thought.   
  
Yet alone in the common room with too much time to think, Kurt began to question wither or not he had fully come to terms with the fact he would never look like any one else, never be able to fit in. It was true what he had said to Storm, he didn't hate but sometimes he would feel a terrible wave of sadness, sadness for what he had never had, the simple gift of being able to walk down a street without looks and screams. The gift of being able to go places in public or of being able to do the simplest little thing.   
  
He had thought for a second that he had met someone who would know what it felt like. The blue skinned woman who helped save them. The young one, Rogue, told him later that her mutant power was to shapeshift. The one known as Mystique was brave, she refused to hide in the shadows that Kurt lived in, following his leaving the circus. But she didn't understand, not really, she didn't, couldn't understand the fear of not fitting in, the knowledge that once someone saw you, you would be hunted, unable to hide.  
  
"It's like missing a limb." the voice came out of nowhere, shaking Kurt from his thoughts. He looked around the empty common room.  
  
"Excuse me?"  
  
"Not having a tail. It's like missing a limb." a head appeared from behind one of the high backed chairs. A young woman, of about 17 years of age, stood up from the chair she had been curled up on. She had short red hair and almost yellow eyes, so pale they looked brown in some lights.  
  
"I'm Raven." she said. "You'll N-Nightcrawler right? You asked the kids what is it like to not have a tail. I was just answering you."  
  
"Really? Why... why does it feel like that?" Kurt asked. Raven frowned, twisting a stand of her short hair in her fingers.  
  
"Well... the human body once had a tail you know? Long ago. Now it's just the last bone on your spine. Sometimes though you can feel a ghost tail, sometimes you can fall and think that your tail is going to caught you before you remember - you don't have a tail." the girl stopped as if suddenly aware of how stupid she must sound.   
  
She hadn't meant to say anything at all. She had been sitting in the chair all afternoon and had heard the kids ask Kurt the question. Inside she had cried, that even here, in Professor Charles's mansion, her Kurt was denied the acceptance he should have. Quickly Raven shock that thought out of her head, fearful in case the Professor had heard her and became suspicious.   
  
After spending weeks planning this, just to get a short look at Kurt, there was no way she was going to spoil it all by some careless thinking. There was no way at all.  
  
"What is it like to have a tail?" Raven asked. Kurt smiled, showing his sharp teeth.  
  
"As if you have another arm or leg. It's extra balance, you can hold something in it." Kurt said. Raven smiled warmly at him.  
  
"I have never seen you before." Kurt said slowly, the thought just accruing to him. The other mutant blushed.  
  
"I... I spend a lot of time alone in my room, or sitting alone. I'm not much of a people person." Inwardly Raven was wondering how she got into this mess and how she could get out. Surly Kurt wasn't trusting enough to simply believe her story and such a flimsily story at that. Kurt simply nodded and began to finger his rosary. Raven moved away and sat back down in her chair, her face burning red. For a while there was only quiet then, slowly, softly a low female voice began to sing.  
  
"In winter, when the fields are white, I sing this song for your delight. In spring, when woods are getting green, I'll try and tell you what I mean. In summer, when the days are long, Perhaps you'll understand the song - "  
  
"What?" Kurt gasped. The singing stopped and Raven closed her eyes briefly.  
  
"I'm sorry, I was just singing a Rhyme my mother used to sing to me called "In Winter When Fields Are White."  
  
"M-my mother used to sing that to me..." Kurt said to himself, his hand still holding his rosary. Raven looked around the side of the chair at him.  
  
"Do you remember your mother?" she asked softly. Kurt shook his head.  
  
"Not really. I remember that Rhyme and her smile. She had the most beautiful laugh in the world. She was very kind and soft. Then one day I woke up and she was gone. Or was I gone?" Kurt frowned. "I think I was gone. I woke up in a different place to the place where I fell asleep. For many years I thought my mother had left me, driven away by my blue skin and tail."  
  
"You were so furry." Raven said suddenly. Kurt looked startled at her sentence. She blushed and looked away, focusing on the red threads on her seat. There was a short, sharp sound as Nightcralwer teleoprted, to appear right in front of the female mutant.  
  
"How did you know that?" Kurt asked in wonder. Raven sighed, a long sad sigh.  
  
"My power... I sometimes get flashes of people's thoughts or a bit of fragmented imagery from their mind. I can't control it or choose when it happens. Other mutants are... disturbed by it, so until I can learn to control it so I don't take peeps into other people's minds, I prefer to stay in my room." Kurt bowed his head and quickly muttered something under his breath. Raven smiled inwardly. Her Kurt was saying a prayer for her, of that she had no doubt. She wanted to laugh and to tell him that it was too late, that no amount of prayers could save her soul now. She was one of the dammed.  
  
"I'm sorry." she mummered. Kurt thought she was apologizing for looking into his mind without his persimmon. Raven was really apologizing for lying to him. It was a good cover story though, and would explain any sudden thing that she might accidentally let slip, something that only Kurt would know. Raven blinked back a few tears.  
  
//Kurt... My Kurt... I choose this way a long time ago, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.\\ When she had first seen Kurt she had to fight every fiber in her body that screamed at her to go over to him. Even though she had not seen him seine the birth she had known it was him. It wasn't the fact he was blue or had a tail, Raven would have known it was him even if she had been blind.  
  
Yet he hadn't known her.  
  
"Wait..." Raven said, something Kurt had said to her coming back to hit her in full force. "You said that for many years you thought your mother had left you. Does that mean you know longer think that?" she stopped again, color rushing to her face as Kurt stared at her.  
  
"I mean, you don't have to answer if you don't want to." she hurried on. Kurt smiled, clearly interested and flattered by the apparent interest Raven was showing in him.  
  
"I found out years after that my mother was being hunted, chased. They wanted to kill both her and me. She hid me in an attempt to save me. She never came back."  
  
"How old were you?" Raven asked, enthralled.  
  
"A few months."  
  
"You can remember when you were a few months ago?" Raven asked in surprise. He knew his mother? He had only been very young, not more than six months when the nurse had visited, alerted by the sound of a crying child. She had taken one look at Kurt, with his little tail and yellow eyes before running out of the house screaming.  
  
"It does seem funny." Kurt said. Raven stood up suddenly and moved away from the chair and Kurt, towards the door and escape. Suddenly this didn't seem like such a good idea.  
  
"I-I have to go."  
  
He watched her as she ran from the room, his tail swishing back and forth. Something about that girl made him nevous. Nightcrawler shut his eyes. When he opened them again he was sitting in Professor Xavier room. The Professor doesn't seem surprised to see him.  
  
"Yes Kurt?"  
  
"I... I was wondering if you could tell me about the student Raven." The bald man looked at Kurt for a long second.  
  
"Raven is leaving." he said. "In fact, she will be gone by now. I do not think you will see her again. Put her out of your mind."   
  
Kurt blinked at him. All the Professor had done was confuse him even more than before. And now Raven was gone. He felt a sudden deep sense of loss, a mourning that tore into his very soul. He didn't want her to go. In desperation he teleoprted all over the mansion. There was no sign of the mutant anywhere. After a while Kurt had to admit defeat.   
  
Raven was gone... and something else, something stronger than anything you could put into words had gone with her.  
  
~~~  
  
Professor X sat in is room, his mind searching, reaching out.   
  
//Oh, Raven.\\ he thought. //How did it come to this... why do you still hide behind masks.\\  
  
//When will you tell him?\\ the last thought was not inward but directed out into the open.  
  
On a hill, over looking the mansion the mutant calling herself Raven was looking down at the building.  
  
//When will you tell him?\\ the thought came to her, sent by Xavier. Raven flung back her head proudly. This was her path and he was not going to turn her from it. Yet her answer was tinted with an age old sorrow.  
  
"I forfeited the right to tell him years ago." she said out loud, knowing that Xavier would pick up on the message and know her answer. Slowly her body began to grow, and her skin change from a pale pink to a rich blue. Where a 17 year old mutant by the name of Raven had stood there was now a taller, older mutant by the name of Mystique.   
  
She turned from the school and from her son, blinking back tears that she thought she had shead years ago. It had been for the memory of her son that she fought against humans.   
  
Humans had killed her son. Humans had destroyed everything she had loved, everything she had ever wanted. Then she found her son, alive! Yet he had to remain as dead to her as the long years after his birth.  
  
The next time they met they would be on different sides. They would fight and she would fight with the intention of winning. There was no possibility in letting her emotions get the better of her. She would fight him if she had to. And she would win.  
  
She would hurt her own son so that he could live in a world where mutants ruled, where he could be who he was without fear of terror. He would live in a world where it was okay to be blue, where she wouldn't have to stay in disguise, where she could be who she was.   
  
She could stay as a human all the time, she had tried and look how that had turned out. A lost son and a dead husband.   
  
She could be white and accepted. She could be loved by a mere human. She could hide what she is. So why shouldn't she live her life like that?  
  
"Because we shouldn't have to."  
  
~The End.~  
  
Thank you to everyone at The X-Factor message board who gave me some help on Mystique/Nightcrawlers relationship. I've used Comic 'verse to make them mother and son, the only change made was to add six months before Mystique lost Kurt.  
  
Please, please, now you've read leave a review. Please?   
  
~Sethoz 


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